“...it
is difficult for me to call others bigots when I am one myself. I
tell people at once, to warn them, that I suffer from deformation of
character. But the truth is I am sick unto death of four thousand
years of males telling me how rotten my sex is. Especially it makes
me sick when I look around and see such rotten men and such
magnificent women, all of whom have a sneaking suspicion that the
four thousand years of remarks are correct.”
That
piece of a paragraph in “The Women's Room” always jumps out at me
and smacks me round the head, for I, too, am sick to death of life
revolving around men, even though things have changed a hell of a lot
since Marilyn French wrote her seminal novel.
But
to me, it seems that it is much more subtle remarks that are made now about how rotten women are.
And
(and I really hate myself for saying this but it is part of the
insidious poison of society, I think, that has made it so) I have
real difficulty in seing magnificent women.
Sure,
there are some. But I look around me and the men are still rotten,
but the women, it seems, have rotted as well, become men in order to
be more equal.
It's
totally understandable, I've done it myself, indeed there are times
when I think I am more male than female. After all, it was once said
about me, in my defense; “She's more man than you'll ever be and
more woman than you'll ever know”. But I still think the whole
deal sucks.
Instead
of half the world ignoring things that matter, everyone does.
I'm
generalising again of course, but sometimes I really wonder what went
wrong. The revolutionary ideals of the Sixties seemed to get buried
or maybe they did just get institutionalised into something else to
rebel against.
Except,
no one wants to rebel anymore. Every one just wants to be cosy and
warm and stick their heads in the sand or, more likely, into their
latest gadget.
Which,
of course, is what I do myself 90% of the time so it's highly
hypocritical of me to rant like this the other 10% of the time. I
justify it with the weak excuse that at least I do think about things
occasionally.
The
passage I was quoting earlier goes on to talk about feeling like an
outlaw and a criminal, the belief that oppressed people should be
able to resort to “criminal means to survive. Criminal means
being, of course, defying the laws passed by the oppressors to keep
the oppressed in line. Such
a position takes you scarily close to advocating oppression itself,
though. We are bound in by the terms of the sentence.
Subject-Verb-Object. The best
we can do is turn it around. And that's no answer, is it?”
She
(French writing as Val's character) always gets me with that because
I can't think of a better answer, an escape from the ties that bind,
one that will actually work.
No
way of enhancing society and life rather than destroying it by slowly
eroding our souls, which is what happens to all of us at present.
Worn out, worn down, worn into worms crushed under foot.
I
suppose the only way out lies with the individual at present, in
turning one's back on it all, but how can anyone do that when the
very thing that is killing us softly and destroying our independence
is the same thing that provides sustenance and actually sustains life
as we know it?
Please note neither of these images belong to me but they felt so appropriate to this post that I appropriated them!!! Please don't sue! |